Whispering Graves: Banshee Series, #2

By Sara Clancy and Scare Street

A deadly whisper . . .

Reeling from the terrors at Fort Wayward, all Benton wants to do is enjoy some peace with his new companion, Nicole. But everything changes in one horrific night with a single, unworldly whisper.

A malicious force now prowls the town unlike anything Benton has ever encountered. It remains hidden in broad daylight. It moves without making a sound. It kills by simply whispering its victim's name.

Benton's world unravels once again. He discovers that not only can this monster hunt Benton in reality, but also in his dreams. Severed from his ability to see through the eyes of a killer, Benton is unable to discover who's next to die. But there's no doubt that the hunt is on.

The duo is determined to save the residents of Fort Wayward. But they struggle to find a way to stop the demon. Time is running out.

It won't be long before the demon discovers Benton's name. And whispers him straight to his grave.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scare Street
• Release date: May 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9798201280024

Book preview

Whispering Graves

Banshee Series Book 2

Written by Sara Clancy

Edited by Emma Salam

Copyright © 2017 by ScareStreet.com

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Let the Nightmares Begin…

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Let the nightmares begin…

See you in the shadows,

Scare Street

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Shattered Dreams Preview Chapter 1

Voices from Beyond…

Chapter 1

The small round dining table made it impossible for Benton to ignore the corpse that sat in the chair across from him. Death had claimed its eyes, hiding both the color and pupil under the milky film, but it didn’t weaken the weight of its gaze. Sitting on either side of him, his parents continued their conversation between mouthfuls of the Chinese takeout that had already gone cold and soaked through the paper containers by the time it had arrived. Benton flinched each time their cutlery scraped against their plates. Familiar aromas clung to the warm air of the living room and filled his nose.

And the corpse kept staring at him.

Benton, his mother said softly.

Benton didn’t respond. Instead, he kept his eyes locked on his dinner plate, one of the few places he could look where the corpse wasn’t visible. His mother’s perfectly manicured hand crept into his field of vision and tapped the edge of his plate.

It’s getting cold, sweetie.

He could feel the weight of his father’s gaze as it shifted onto him. And with that, Benton now had the full attention of all three people seated at the round table. Clutching his fork until his fingers lost feeling, Benton forced his eyes up. With his parents sitting on either side of him, there was nothing to disrupt his view from the dead man before him. Sixty years had passed since Oliver Ackerman had been buried in a shallow grave, and only a month since Benton had dug him up.

It hadn’t been an intentional thing, at least not consciously. Benton and his parents had moved into the house hoping for a fresh start, and on their first night, while sleepwalking, Benton had found the mangled corpse in their barn. The whole event had seemed to fit right in with the long progression of twisted nightmarish happenings that constituted his life. People liked to tell him that it was just bad luck or a coincidence. He knew it wasn’t. He knew that there was something about him that wasn’t quite right.

But no one ever really believes a teenager when he says that he feels he’s different. It didn’t stop him from feeling it; like an alien body under his skin. Something growing. Something that had strengthened the night he had found Oliver, and evolved the day a demonic spirit had tried to kill him.

That attack had forever shifted something within Benton, and Oliver had marked the occasion by making his first appearance. He had begun almost timidly. Standing at the foot of Benton’s bed as he slept, or lurking in the shadows only to disappear when Benton turned a light on. He wasn’t so timid anymore. Now he liked to be seen, but only by Benton, and always appearing undeniably dead. Oliver was as bloated and festering as a fresh corpse, nothing like the brittle, discolored remains that had been pulled from the earth. Each time he saw him, Benton could smell the lingering stench of decay. As soon as Benton locked eyes with Oliver from across the table, the scent of rotting meat grew until he gagged.

Are you feeling okay? his mother pressed.

Yeah, Benton said after swallowing down his bile. I’m fine.

His mother talked across him, her attention focused solely on his father. He looks pale.

Benton jumped when his father pressed a hand against his forehead.

Relax, Chey, he’s not warm.

Really, I’m fine, Benton assured as he let his eyes drift back down to his plate. The broken eye contact didn’t distract him from the ghost’s attention. It only intensified it, until Benton could almost taste the putrid smell in the back of his throat. Oliver never took his eyes off of him. I’m just not that hungry.

Well, you need to eat something, Cheyanne said. You can’t keep expecting Constable Rider to pay for your meals.

His father scoffed. Don’t be so dramatic. We let the Constable’s daughter eat our food when she’s over.

It’s hardly the same, Theo, his mother shot back. He’s been having at least one meal a day over there. That adds up. We don’t want her thinking that we’re taking advantage of her hospitality.

What neither of them was taking into consideration was that Constable Rider’s daughter, Nicole, was a force of nature, like a hurricane of bubbly energy and glitter. When she decided that something was going to happen, she didn’t give up until she made it happen. Whether it was making Benton agree that they were friends, or hunting down and slaughtering a serial killing demon, she put the same amount of energy into both tasks. While Benton had decided that he needed to get out of the house, somewhere far away from his parents, and Oliver, it was Nicole who had declared that he would spend that free time over at her place. And, somewhere along the line, it just sort of happened.

The stench grew stronger, ripping Benton from the safety of his thoughts and thrusting him back into his meal with the dead. As subtly as he could, he pressed the back of his hand against his nose and breathed through his mouth. He could feel the traces of airborne fat coating his throat and making his eyes water.

With renewed determination to ignore Oliver, Benton stabbed at a hunk of pork. The crimson sweet and sour sauce swelled around the prongs of his fork. It appeared to thicken as he watched it, darkening until it looked like blood oozing out from the slice of meat. His stomach churned and he forced the morsel off his fork. Instead, he quickly shoved down a bite of honey chicken before Oliver could play any mind tricks with it.

The mouthful was enough to satisfy his parents and they resumed their previous conversation, chatting happily, unaware of the corpse only inches from their sides. They didn’t see him, didn’t feel the weight of his dead eyes upon them, but they did feel the shift in the air. It was a small comfort to see them shiver and watch as his father went to check the thermostat. But it was still a comfort. It was a slither of proof for Benton that he wasn’t crazy.

Forcing himself to swallow the mouthful, Benton glanced up at Oliver. He was closer. Sitting perfectly still, his hands on his lap and his spine straight. The specter had drifted forward, entering into the solid wood of the table. Benton’s heart hammered as a cold sweat bristled his skin. He blinked and Oliver was an inch closer. Staring. Silent. Benton lowered his gaze and felt the shift, the press of frigid air against his skin as Oliver drew closer. Benton looked up, and Oliver was halfway through the table. This time, Benton didn’t take his eyes off of the ghost, but he couldn’t quell his need to blink. Each time his eyelids flicked down, Oliver leaped forward until his decomposing face swallowed Benton’s vision. His sunken, cloudy eyes held Benton’s, while the stench of death gushed from him like a physical force. Benton felt drenched in it. His clothes grew heavy with festering vapor and he could almost feel a thick putrid mucus covering his arms and face. Oliver lurched forward again. Close enough now that the decaying flesh of his nose pressed, wet and weeping, against Benton’s own.

Benton, Theodore said from somewhere now unseen. Eat your dinner.

***

Nicole shuffled in the driver’s seat of her jeep, tucking in one leg and pressing her side against the back of the seat, making it very clear to Benton that he now had her full attention. The night surrounded the jeep with deep shadows that the weak overhead light could barely fight off. It wasn’t hard to get out of town in a place like Fort Wayward. All you had to do was drive for fifteen minutes, in any direction a dirt road would allow you, and it was as if civilization ceased to exist.

Benton normally only called her at night when he needed to escape into that kind of oblivion for a bit. His parents were still dead set against him having a driver’s license, and since walking blindly into the dark plains surrounding his ranch house wasn’t the smartest idea, she was his only ticket out. And she was always happy to help. When Benton had hurled himself into her still moving car, she had expected a long tirade about something. He was a fan of suppressing his emotions until they exploded out of him like some kind of verbal volcanic eruption. But he had remained silent for most of their trip and responded to her attempts to start a conversation with the most minimal word usage possible. At his uneasy silence, Nicole had swung the jeep onto a new path, crossing through the lush Alberta plains before climbing up to the tip of a Buffalo Jump.

There were a few sheer drop-offs scattered around Fort Wayward that had once been used by local First Nations tribes during buffalo hunts. The animals had been coaxed into a stampede and herded over the edge to plummet to their deaths, earning the location the title, ‘Buffalo Jumps.’

Nowadays, they were more commonly used for tourist attractions and for their breathtaking views. It was possible to look for miles in each direction and see nothing but untouched beauty. And at night, with nothing to compete against, the stars seemed like a blanket that covered the world, spread so thickly that they even sparkled along the horizon. Nicole liked that. She adored how the view could make her feel both larger than life and absolutely tiny within the same instant. It always helped her to put things into perspective, and she brought Benton here the first time he had begged her to ‘just drive.’ He hadn’t gushed poetically about the sight, but he had smiled and relaxed into the passenger seat. It had taken her a few extra trips to learn that, for Benton, loose easy smiles were pretty much his version of extravagant praise.

As they sat, with Benton constantly skimming across the radio stations, Nicole was partly hoping that he was in the mood to discuss the life altering fact that he was a banshee. It had been almost a month since Nicole had been forced to realize how little she actually knew about the world, or even just her own sleepy little corner of it.

When she had first been told that Santa wasn’t real, Nicole had spent days learning everything she could about where the legend had come from and how it had grown to the point that she had believed in flying reindeers. She had the same impulse now. To throw herself into discovering everything there was to know until she could feel certain of the world again. But she was nowhere near ready to begin researching the monster that had murdered her friend. The wounds were still too raw. She needed time to reconcile what had happened before she faced it again. And she could take as much time as she wanted where that particular monster was concerned. After all, she had chosen the spot for its unmarked grave. It was a patch of earth in the middle of nowhere. No one would ever find it. Only she and Benton knew where it was. So it could wait for her, rotting in the earth as she mourned, and she would study what was left.

She was, however, ready to start exploring Benton; a real live male banshee. She had a thousand questions and a million things she wanted to try. The problem was, every time he seemed to be on the verge of agreeing, she got way too excited and ended up bombarding him with too much, too fast. Overwhelmed, he would change the topic and that would be that. But not tonight.

As Benton leaned forward to, once again, search through the radio stations, Nicole took a deep sobering breath and reminded herself of the plan. She had spent some time going through her list and had arrived at a first request that would be simple and non-threatening. She wanted to try and get his banshee wail on tape. She had only ever heard it twice before, and, since they were fighting for their lives on both occasions, she hadn’t thought to record it. If she could just stick to that one request tonight, Benton would have his distraction and they would have finally taken their first step into exploring a world beyond their understanding.

She smoothed her hands over her long hair, licked her lips, and forced on her most charming smile. Benton froze instantly, hand still on the radio, and turned to face her. His normally stormy eyes looked almost silver in the dim light as they studied her face closely.

No.

I haven’t said anything, she said with a whine.

You’re giving me your Lady Frankenstein look and I’m not up for it tonight.

I do not have a Lady Frankenstein look, she grumbled. I had a simple request.

Nope.

Fine. So we’ll talk about you.

He